Question to the Ministry of Justice:

To ask His Majesty's Government whether they have plans to reform the legal aid system to reduce costs.

The Ministry of Justice is exploring a range of activity to drive increased departmental efficiency and productivity over the Spending Review period, including across the legal aid system. One key opportunity will be through our programme to build a suite of new digital systems that will transform the delivery of legal aid over this parliament. Our aim is not only to ensure we have secure and reliable systems following the recent cyber-attack on the Legal Aid Agency (LAA) but to boost productivity and reduce the costly administrative burdens faced by those providing legal aid services. We are working urgently to understand how we can accelerate this programme and deliver efficiencies both for legal aid firms and the LAA.